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New trends find home on the range

NEAR THE CHIRICAHUA MOUNTAINS — Just before sunrise, fighting a temptation to snooze a few hours more in my casita’s comfy king-size bed, I pull on some shoes and a sweatshirt and head out into the chill early morning air.

To the west, the sky above the still-darkened Chiricahua Mountains slowly shifts from gray to a light, opalescent blue. A family of domesticated geese drifts across the surface of a small, still pond ringed by tall oak trees. And Dharma, an Abkash with sleek white fur – the ranch’s friendly canine sentry – lies in his usual spot on the café’s wraparound porch, dreaming his peaceful dog dreams.

Sunglow Ranch, a retreat that promises a break from the stress and turmoil of the city, was living it up to its word.

“It’s just a total chill factor here,” Susan Nunn, the ranch’s general manager, tells me later, over a breakfast of pumpkin-walnut pancakes, sausage, apple cider and coffee. “You do what you want to do.”

Located in sparsely populated Cochise County, an hour-and-a-half drive southeast of Tucson, the ranch sits on 400 acres at the base of the Chiricahua Mountains, where desert and rolling grasslands merge into juniper and oak forest.

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INTERACTIVES

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Down at the end of a long dirt road, the property backs up to 300,000 acres of the Chiricahua National Monument.

Its secluded location makes the ranch a popular getaway for harried city-dwellers, some who travel from as far as New York City for a few days of rest and relaxation.

“People love the isolation,” Nunn says. “The more chaos they have in their world, the more delighted they are to be here.”

Beginning this summer, the ranch has added a comprehensive program of sustainable and earth-friendly practices to put guests at its nine casitas at even greater ease.

At the café, baked goods are made from organic wheat that is ground on the premises. Green and leafy vegetables increasingly come from the ranch’s garden. Other produce is bought from local farms to further reduce the restaurant’s carbon footprint. Harsh chemical cleansers have also been banished from the kitchen.

The café was certified by the national Green Restaurant Association for its efforts.

“We had to get rid of anything Styrofoam before they would even talk to us,” Nunn says.

The change holds major appeal to guests like Eleanor Kedney, a poet and creative writing teacher from Tucson who is planning a writing seminar at the ranch in several weeks.

“I think that how we walk on this earth is very important,” she says. “It makes me feel good that I’m spending my money in a place that’s not polluting or taxing the environment.”

All of the casitas now boast 150-gallon rainwater catchments, which provide for much of the irrigation of the landscaping. Solar-powered lighting has replaced incandescent bulbs on the driveway.

Vegetarians, vegans and other health-conscious diners will also find themselves at home at the ranch’s café.

“We make really, really healthy meals here,” says Nunn, a vegetarian who has studied macrobiotics for the last 10 years.

Beyond the ranch’s gates, Cochise County itself is experiencing something of a transformation. The largely rural county is now the heart of Arizona’s fledgling winemaking industry, which has seen major expansion in the last few years.

While wine has been made in the area since at least the early 1980s, since 2002 the number of wineries has more than tripled – from nine to 27.

“It’s really taking off,” says Rod Keeling, president of the Arizona Wine Growers Association and owner of Keeling-Shaefer Vineyards, just down the road from Sunglow Ranch. “You can grow this incredible fruit here.”

Keeling retired several years ago, and relocated to the area from Tempe. The climate, wildlife, scenic beauty – and the quiet, largely undeveloped character of the land – made it the ideal place to spend his and his wife’s sunset years.

“This is a genuine place,” he says. “It’s a place you want to keep coming back to.”

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MORE INFORMATION:

One Bedroom Casita (including dinner, breakfast, taxes and gratuities)
1 queen bed
One person - $200.00
Additional person - $70.00

Visit Sunglow Ranch and Cochise County’s tourism board for more details.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Organic ethnic grocery store is all the multi-culti rage

CHANDLER — With its automatic doors, uniformed cashiers, and numbered aisles, Lee Lee’s may, at first glance, look like your average supermarket. But it doesn’t smell like it.

Walk into Lee Lee’s Oriental market on Dobson and Warner roads and you’ll instantly be hit with the overpowering, brackish smell of fresh fish.

Giant tanks along the back wall crawl with live crab and lobster. An open icebox nearby boasts everything from scallops to a jumbo octopus – whole.

The produce section, its bins piled high with fresh fruits and vegetables, carries the usual Gala apples and Bell peppers. But these American grocery store standbys are greatly outnumbered by ethnic foods and ingredients.

In fact, most customers pass the “mainstream” goods to examine the Chinese eggplant and Taiwanese pak choi further down the aisle. A few bins away, the sweet scent of Thai coconuts and winter melon offer shoppers a brief respite from the seafood section’s olfactory assault.

Lee Lee’s, which packs its aisles with ethnic foods and spices from China, Korea, Japan, Africa, India and more, is a place where most products have to be subtitled in English. Here, Cheetos look out of place amidst coffee-coated Koh-Kae peanuts, sunflower chips, and crunchy Japanese corn rolls.

Meng and Paulina Truong, who live in Chandler, are the founders and owners of Lee Lee’s. The market, which started out as a small shop on Southern Avenue, has become so popular they recently opened a second location in Peoria.

But the Truongs weren’t always so business-savvy. When they immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1980s, they barely had a high school education between them.

“It was really hard starting it,” Paulina Troung writes in an email. She’s still not fully comfortable interviewing in English. “We made a lot of mistakes at first. We didn’t know anything, really.”

While the Truongs may not have been confident with their business skills, they were at least confident in their idea. Paulina Truong says she and her husband recognized the scarcity of Asian markets in the Valley at the time, and knew opening the grocery store would not only help them, “but the whole Asian community, too.”

Chandler resident Yin Lin, who emigrated from China to the U.S. in 1986 and heard about Lee Lee’s from friends a few years later. Although the store was still fairly small, she remembers being shocked by how many Chinese products Lee Lee’s carried. She says the competing Chinese grocery at the time didn’t compare for selection and freshness.

Lin was also attracted to the way Meng Truong made an effort to make his customers feel heard. “I would always go up and say hi and give him suggestions about products I thought he should start carrying,” she says through a translator. “I’d say ‘I need this to make so-and-so Chinese dish, could you order it?’ And the next time I came in, he would have it there.” Nearly 20 years later, she still goes to Lee Lee’s for her weekly groceries.

Paulina Truong says requests like Lin’s fueled the store’s swift growth. “When more and more diverse customers came and asked us to start selling things, we had to expand,” she says.

But just because the Truongs widened their selection doesn’t mean they sacrificed the freshness their customers came to expect. Lin recalls Meng Truong telling her how he drove all the way to California every week to personally select the store’s produce. Meng says he still endeavors to bring his customers “only the freshest” goods.

And indeed, despite the smell, the line to have meat and seafood caught or cut stretches around the counter.

“Everything is fresh here. Period,” says Amla Dhamdarve, who has shopped for her family’s Indian groceries at Lee Lee’s since 2000. “That’s why I keep coming back.”

Jennifer Truong, the couple’s 19-year-old daughter, said that when she sees the faces of loyal customers like Amla or the frequent crowds of new buyers, she takes pride in her parents’ success. She knows firsthand that they didn’t come by it easily.

“When I was younger, I hardly ever saw them. I could never go on family vacations like all the other kids I knew,” she says. “But I just admire and appreciate them so much now. They started out with literally nothing and now they’re definitely something.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Salsa brings spice, nutrients to the table

TEMPE — For decades, ketchup’s reign as the delicacy-of-the-moment seemed secure amidst piles of hamburgers, hot dogs, hash browns and potatoes.

But in 2000, a cousin staged a tomato-y coup d’ etat by offering more flavor with less ingredients that had more health benefits.

“Salsa adds a good kick of flavor to whatever you’re eating,” says salsa chef Lupita Lopez. “The benefits of the tomatoes are your health bonus.”

Lopez’s recipes were among 100 entries in the 2008 My Nana’s Salsa Challenge held April 26 on the shores of Tempe Town Lake.

The competition featured about 1,300 gallons of salsa, about 3,000 pounds of chips, and hundreds of salsa-eating fanatics who stopped by for a dip.

“All I know is that jalapeños may be good for your heart, but that’s about it,” independent salsa chef and challenge contestant Dana Lespron says. “Right now, flavor is first. My motto: A fusion of flavor with an explosion of heat. The taste is definitely my priority.”

Salsa’s lineage can be traced back to the tables of the ancient Aztecs, Mayans and Incan Indian tribes of Central and South America. Over time, tomatoes and chili peppers made their way north to Mexico.

That’s where the Spanish conquerors are believed to have had their first taste of salsa. They used it as a condiment to spice up turkey and fish dishes. In 1571, the word salsa was introduced into the Spanish language. In English, it means “sauce.”

It swept into the United States sometime after the 1940s. Today, contests such as the one of the banks of Tempe Town Lake celebrate this spicy, healthy condiment.

Many of the salsa competitors seemed unaware of the list of ingredients in their recipes that were beneficial to their health.

Tomatoes, the base of any salsa, contain beneficial amounts of vitamin C, vitamin A and potassium. The red pigment in the tomatoes comes from lycopene, which, with enough servings, can cut the risks of prostate cancer and stomach cancers.

Onions were another common ingredient in the contestants’ recipes. Onions are often suggested for relief in treating coughs, colds, asthma and bronchitis. They have sulfides that are similar to those in garlic and help lower blood pressure and counts for complex fat molecules in the blood itself.

Other fruits and vegetables in salsa can supply antioxidant vitamins, natural phytochemicals, and mineral potassium to protect against disease. Chiles and other fresh fruits and vegetables, for example are typically high in vitamins and low in sodium and calories.

Salsa geeks should know there’s more to their favorite condiment than flavor.

“My secret ingredient? I don’t know if I have one,” says Cameron Jalla, an independent salsa chef sponsored by Walgreens. “I’m not too sure how many other people use it, but I put olive oil in my salsa today. But everything I add is aimed for taste, definitely.”

Olive oil is the only vegetable oil that can be consumed as-is after it is freshly pressed. Olive oil can have beneficial health effects due to the monosaturated fatty acids (which can be helpful in lowering “bad” cholesterol counts) and antioxidants. It is linked with a reduction in risks with coronary heart disease.

Yet salsa chefs insist their product stands on taste alone.

“All depending on what you put in your salsa, I know a lot of ingredients might help with heart disease and sometimes cardiovascular issues,” says Lori Roberson, another independent salsa chef and challenge contestant. “Still, the taste beats any other condiment…especially my salsa.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.